Candide

EVER since 1759, when Voltaire wrote "Candide" in ridicule of the notion that this is the
best of all possible worlds, this world has been
a gayer place for readers. Voltaire wrote it in
three days, and five or six generations have
found that its laughter does not grow old.
"Candide" has not aged. Yet how different
the book would have looked if Voltaire had
written it a hundred and fifty years later than
1759. It would have been, among other things,
a book of sights and sounds. A modem writer
would have tried to catch and fix in words some
of those Atlantic changes which broke the Atlantic monotony of that voyage from Cadiz to
Buenos Ayres. When Martin and Candide were
sailing the length of the Mediterranean we
should have had a contrast between naked
scarped Balearic cliffs and headlands of Calabria
in their mists. We should have had quarter distances, far horizons, the altering silhouettes of
an Ionian island. Colored birds would have
filled Paraguay with their silver or acid cries.

Dr. Pangloss, to prove the existence of design in the universe, says that noses were made
to carry spectacles, and so we have spectacles.

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